Write what you know

A friend gave me a pocket book size journal from Hallmark that had on the front--words matter: write to learn what you know. That is almost the title of the first chapter in my book, Turn Your Face: How to Be Heard and Get What You Want Most of the Time. To start the new year, buy the kind of paper you like and start writing ten minutes a day, five days a week. Put on paper whatever thoughts are rolling around in your head and whatever feelings are rumbling in your gut. Writing will take you places you didn't know you were going to go, so you might write someting that surprises you, pleases you, frightens you. If the words are dangerous and no one should ever see them under any circumstances, tear up the pages, flush them, shred them. You don't have to keep them to benefit from having written them.

Barbara Linney